The Bob Cesca Show Presented By BubbleGenius.com 3/16/17

Fetuses in Food: Cliff Schecter joins us for the hour; Cliff versus Cleta Mitchell; The Left and Winning; Trump campaign chair caught having hotel sex with a minor; Latest Muslim ban thwarted by Hawaii federal judge; Trump is a political idiot; Lock Her Up; Obamacare repeal and the Medicaid expansion; Maddow and the tax returns; and more. Brought to you by Bubble Genius, Harry's Razors, the BobCesca.com Amazon Link and The Bowen Law Group.

It should also be said..how sad is it that Rump has to recapture the “glory” of the campaign trail by having these rallies? How much do you think that costs in terms of security? It’s also just frightening to see the rank toxic populism, toxic nationalism in these things..

muselet

If liberals—however defined—behaved the way Cliff Schecter did in going after Cleta Mitchell, no liberal would ever again be invited onto the yak shows. You’d see even more panels consisting of a Right-wing backbencher and someone from Dead Andy debating someone like David Brooks (because he’s what passes for a centrist on television). It was fun to hear, though, and kudos to Mr Schecter for chewing up Cleta Mitchell and spitting her out.

Liberals—again, however defined—do need to be more forceful in arguing against conservatives—however defined—but no good thing would come of joining the Right in the gutter by ignoring political norms. Then even people who are somewhat sympathetic to liberal goals would write politics off with a weary Both Sides! and vote R because at least they’d get a tax cut out of it. There used to be grown-ups in both our major parties, but they’ve been purged from Team Red.

The Left learned an important lesson from the Sixties: don’t do it in the street and frighten the horses (to quote Mrs Patrick Campbell ‘way out of context). The Right has never had to learn that lesson because it is, and always has been, indulged by our glorious news media and, ultimately, by society. Because of that, Righty bombchuckers can always get invited onto yak shows, can always get hired as commentators, can always get lucrative book deals, even when they have nothing of value to say. Lefty bombchuckers … well, is there such a thing any more?

The story about Ralph Shortey soliciting a 17-year-old boy will be a big deal, you should pardon the expression, for a couple of days and then be forgotten until something happens judicially. Which is appropriate, since Shortey is pretty much a nobody outside the Oklahoma State Senate, notwithstanding his enthusiastic support for Donald Trump during the election.

That fetuses-in-food bill is utter crackpottery, and Shortey’s explanation made no sense:

“There are companies that are using embryonic stem cells to research and basically cause a chemical reaction to determine whether or not something tastes good or not,” he told The Daily Oklahoman newspaper.

“As a pro-life advocate, it kind of disturbed me that we would use aborted embryos or aborted human fetuses to extract stem cells and use them for research to basically make things taste better.”

Donald Trump is constitutionally incapable of not blathering, just like most of the people he has surrounded himself with. This is both good—he torpedoed his second Muslim ban because he couldn’t shut up—and bad—international diplomacy will lie in sticks and splinters by the end of his presidency—and we’re in for four years of this nonsense.

The Right has wanted to split the Ninth Circuit in two for thirty years, at least.

Trump is indeed a moron behaving randomly, but there are several people in his inner circle with enough low cunning to cook up distractions to dangle before our glorious news media. It’s possible they’re also just morons, but they’ve been successful so far.

Absolutely, someone on Team Trump mailed a partial federal return to David Cay Johnston. Johnston seems to think so, as does Kevin Drum.

I’m guessing someone higher up the food chain than Rachel Maddow wanted the income tax story to be hyped. She’s too smart and too experienced to have gone off the rails like that on her own (I fervently hope).

We’re lucky the Rs are terrible at writing laws—RepubliCare would be worse than the status quo ante, and the House Freedumb Caucus wants to make it even more horrific—and governing, but since they have majorities in both houses, they only have to monkeywrench the ACA and blame the Ds for the resulting chaos, which is what the less-dim bulbs in the candelabra are planning. The flying monkeys in the House will hoot and gibber that the ACA wasn’t actually repealed, but people will be poorer and sicker and more insecure, so they’ll still feel, in the dark void where their souls once were, a warm glow of contentment with the outcome.

I think Maddox was trying to take the Al Capone’s vault formula to make a point.

muselet

Dunno. It doesn’t seem like a smart way to make a point.

–alopecia

katanahamon

Have to vent…just received a “town hall by phone”call, where I listened to two legislators diss Obamacare and sell the horrific American Health Fuck Yeah Act. They repeatedly said that the ACA was in a “death spiral,” “unfixable,” “a failure,” then said Rump’s plan was a “work in progress,” apparently not recognizing the flaw in that logic, while not affording the ACA that same status. Also along the lines of black is white, the sky is green, they said that the new bill was conceived by experts and would cover more people more affordably. Just..unbelievable.

An elderly gentleman asked about runaway drug prices. Their answer? They are because of the previous administration’s odious regulations. Yeah. Really.

They also did a poll of several items, and healthcare was first, and defense was low in the results..one legislator then said that he thought “that result is too low, the American people have that as a much higher priority.” (When he was just faced with the actual results that contradicted that …) The same legislator also complained that Obama increased the national debt, and stated that since Repubs have won so much, they have a “mandate.”

Not sure I can ever listen to one of those again, except that it gives insight into what those weasels are trying to pull. The participants were Mia Love, Utah, and some guy from Texas.

Badgerite

“They can’t govern.” Yes, that is true. But I would add they can’t govern in a way that does anything but harm the country and the people who voted for them. Their problem, then, is that democracy provides for the public to have an say in these decisions. Which is why they have done everything they can to shut down actual representative government in this country. Attacking voting rights and the free pres. Gerrymandering to under represent those political views that don’t subscribe to government of social Darwinism.

Have you ever heard old speeches by Hitler? The crowds cheering him on sounded just like the crowd at that rally. But I have to disagree with your “fanboy” analogy. It’s true they want to be like him but their slavishness has an ugly quality that is missing from other “fan” groups. Plus, that crowd noise is unlike any other–nothing else sounds like that…not sports, not concerts, not celebrity apprentices, nothing. I would be interested in hearing what psychologists who specialize in studying crowd and mob behavior have to say about my theory on this “sound” difference. Anyway, makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Just another warning sign that we should be very, very wary of this incredibly stupid man and his blind, unreachable fans.

katanahamon

The problem too with the left and wanting to win is that elements within the party are not only not willing to compromise with the right wing, but they are also not willing to compromise with their own party, a la Bernie bots and Stein voters..whereas the right, they go in that booth and pull the “R” lever. Until the left learns that we/they can only win by actually voting their party, every election, well..we won’t win.

I wanted to say “please never play Trump’s voice or rallies again” but..I guess it’s important for us to hear just how ignorant America is.